The Devil’s Rain (1975)
Article 6059 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-13-2022
Directed by Robert Fuest
Featuring Ernest Borgnine, Eddie Albert, Ida Lupino
Country: Mexico / United States
What it is: A 64-pack of Crayola crayons left in the sun.

A family in possession of a book of evil do battle with a Satanic cult.

With Robert Fuest’s name in the credits, I expected there would be some interesting stylistic touches to the movie, and there are. In fact, the movie’s vibe works pretty well for me during the first third of the movie. At that point the movie starts to wander, and once we reach the sequence in which we find out about the burning of a sorcerer three hundred years ago, it shows it’s not averse to traversing the path of well-worn cliches. The movie seems mostly remembered nowadays for two things. One is the presence of John Travolta in an early role, but I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to his fans as anything but a curiosity. The other is the extended meltathon that ends the movie, and since we get a taste of the effect in the opening scenes of the movie, it’s a bit like enjoying a hamburger in the beginning and then having to eat the whole cow at the end. It’s a shame; I like some of the aspects of the movie so well (especially the desolate locations) that I wish a decent story had been attached to the movie.